Ismail Khan

Ismail Khan (born 1946) is the Minister of Water and Energy of Afghanistan since 2005 and a former warlord during the 1990s. He fought for the Northern Alliance against the Taliban government with a large army, mainly his fellow Tajiks from western Afghanistan.

Biography
Ismail Khan was born to a Sunni Islamic Tajik family in western Afghanistan's Herat Province, and joined the Afghan National Army (ANA) in 1979. After the arrests and assassinations in the countryside caused riots at the Governor's palace in Herat, Ismail Khan joined the mutiny and fought against the Soviet Union and communist Afghan forces. For the duration of the 1980s, he fought against the Russians, and in the 1990s fought against the Taliban faction of the Mujahideen. As a Tajik, he fought the Pashtun Taliban militants as a major leader of the Northern Alliance.

After 2001's ISAF invasion, Khan became a politician and in 2005 became Minister of Water and Energy of the new government.